


I Committed Fratricide?

by Galaxsphere347



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Androids, Episode: s06e26-s07e01 Descent Parts 1-2, Other, POV Data (Star Trek)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2020-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:09:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27742777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galaxsphere347/pseuds/Galaxsphere347
Summary: A short story which popped into my head while in hospital waiting for a routine scan today.No one really knows what actually happened to Lore after he was deactivated at the end of the episode Descent Part 2, so I have tried to extrapolate from an AU point of view.As usual I am putting out my disclaimer that I do not own Star Trek or any of its characters, which belong to Paramount. I am writing purely for fun and not for profit.
Relationships: Data/Lore
Comments: 10
Kudos: 8





	I Committed Fratricide?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strangeworks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeworks/gifts), [CelticLady](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelticLady/gifts).



"I love you.... Brother." 

The voice slows to an inhuman slur and the machine's eyes turn flat and white, the electrical impulses extinguished from them. 

As Data takes his hand away from Lore's off switch, slid to permanent deactivation, he knows this is the right decision. It is tough love. 

Data truly is the only one of his kind now. 'A culture of one' his Captain had told him once. However this only serves to accentuate his unique but isolated state, as he prepares to blow the corrupted entity appelated absurdly as his brother into extinction.

Data however feels nothing. No sadness, no conscience, only the demands of duty. Of what is deemed to be right.  
The disenfranchised Borg drones which Lore had swept under their control would now be liberated, free to build their own community. Independent of both a hive mind and the autocratic doctrines of his brother, but to do what exactly? Was it ethical when they had no aims or ideas of their own and would have no guidance to exist as free beings? 

Data has no emotions but his ethical programming enables him to weigh up what he is doing compared to the plight of the displaced Borg. 

Is either of them right? 

He searches through his internal files and determines what is required for him to eliminate this foul mechanoid which has blighted the reputation of his kind for more than five years and ensure they never come back. 

He determines he has made the correct decision. 

First he will disassemble the body. Do as Doctor Maddox had instructed and preserve the components which could possibly help the researchers at the Daystrom Institute determine what went wrong. Chiefly the Positronic brain.

And of course the emotion chip. That precious gift his creator intended for him but was stolen in a cheap con by this...... Data does not possess the ability to cuss but he could mirror the words Commander Riker used on many occasion. Data is void of feelings but he is aware such cruel theft was utterly unacceptable.  
The rest of the pieces? Well he knows what needs to be done.... 

As he works silently in Lore's former command centre he brings to recall the time he discovered his brother on Omicron Theta. His decision to go down to the surface. The discovery of the dismantled android, a copy of himself in a concealed vault. His agreement to it being brought on board the Enterprise and reassembled.  
His wish to interact with Lore in an attempt to further understand the machines created by his maker Dr Noonian Soong, which at the time looked identical to him and which he referred to with the appropriate personal pronoun. He had quickly realised his mistake when Lore proved to be cruelly and inhumanly ambitious posing a grave threat to the crew on the Enterprise the one thing which would always be Data's first priority. 

The summoning of the crystalline entity. Ready to consume the Enterprise and the 1000 souls on board.

"Are you prepared for the kind of death you've earned little man?" 

The snap decision to fling Lore onto the transporter pad and beam them into space to save young Wesley Crusher's life. Why did he not consider putting out a beacon or tractor beam to ensure the evil android was kept under tight rein until they were secured in the brig? 

The crew assumed the crystalline entity would consume Lore, but it did not. 

Several years later when Data assumed complete control of the Enterprise, driven by a homing beacon installed within his systems by his father, he was unaware of the threat the diversion to Terlina III presented to a dying boy in sickbay. True, he could not feel, but he understood the brevity of it. The Captain had been lenient in his dealings with him after it was over. And what was achieved by it? 

He never expected Lore to turn up, but they had miraculously survived both the crystalline entity and drifting in open space for two years. Severely damaged yes, and no longer looking like Data's 'twin' but Soong the soft hearted idiot that he was had spent his dwindling strength on repairing them. 

Data again extrapolated the actions he had taken in 2364. As a result of it Lore had taken advantage of their dying creator's weakness, duping both himself and Soong and stealing the chip his father had developed especially for him to experience basic emotions. Something he had always wanted. It was for him, not Lore! 

Briefly Data feels a hot flash of anger. Was this a trace of the infiltration by Lore still influencing within? He did not know. But it was there, clear and strong. 

And so after Lore eluded Starfleet yet again they had captured a crippled Borg cube and experimented on the displaced drones, injecting them with Positronic components, twisting them and compelling them to believe the aspirations foistered onto them, ordering them to kill on command. 

Lore had even corrupted Data's mind using a carrier wave from the stolen emotion chip and tortured his best friend Geordi who at this moment was lying in sickbay a ruined mess.

But now it was over. This is the end finally for Lore. They will never come back, ever. Data has every justification in doing this. It is for the common good of Starfleet command, the Federation and every single organic being in the Galaxy.

As he places the valuable components in a strong case, ready for dispatch to the Daystrom Annex on Galor IV, Data sets aside the heap of mechanoid junk which was formerly Lore, and pulls out a tiny weapon. It is a Feron T disruptor, a relic from his escape from Kivas Fajo.  
Aiming it squarely at the gathered pieces, Data fires a single blast and for a nanosecond everything bubbles and smokes before turning to vapour, then is gone. It is cold and final but he repeats to himself it is the right thing to do.

Before he turns to exit and return to his captain he allows himself a deadpan glance over Lore's command centre, still with everything in situ. But even empty of their presence it retains a ghostly essence of the now defunct homicidal android. Data utters into the plain air his two word epitaph. 

"Goodbye Lore...."

**Author's Note:**

> This is a real quick and dirty fic I was inspired to write on the spur of the moment, so there might be a few errors or omissions. However I have tried to stick mostly to the canon version of events where Data ruminates over his past encounters with Lore apart from a few minor details. The only headcanon/AU part really is the speculation as to what happened to Lore's remains, which still remains a mystery and no canon explanation has ever been given. The truth is out there somewhere I guess!


End file.
